The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

Patriots, Chris­tians and con­cerned cit­i­zens are increas­ingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, and battle lines are being qui­etly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary forces against us.

A Feb­ruary 20 report enti­tled “The Modern Militia Move­ment” was issued by the Mis­souri Infor­ma­tion Analysis Center (MIAC) that paints main­stream patri­otic Amer­i­cans as dan­gerous threats to law enforce­ment and to the country. Oper­ating under the Mis­souri State Highway Patrol, the MIAC is listed as a Fusion Center that was estab­lished in coop­er­a­tion with the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity and the Depart­ment of Justice.

Because authen­ticity of the report was ques­tioned by some, this writer con­tacted Mis­souri state Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Guest (R-King City) who had per­son­ally ver­i­fied that the report had indeed been issued. Rep. Guest is chairman of the Per­sonal Pri­vacy Com­mittee and is a promi­nent leader in the national blow­back against the Real ID Act of 2005 that requires states to issue uni­form driver’s licenses con­taining per­sonal bio­metric data. (See Guest warns against Big Brother, Real ID)

Rep. Guest stated that he was “shocked and out­raged” at the report, which clearly paints him and many other elected state leaders, as a poten­tial threats to law enforcement.

Instead of focusing on actual crim­inal inci­dents of “home-grown” ter­rorism, the MAIC report instead lists issues that it believes are common to the threats it per­ceives. Thus, Amer­i­cans involved with the fol­lowing issues are highly suspect:

– “Ammu­ni­tion Account­ability Act” — requiring each bullet to to be seri­al­ized and reg­is­tered to the purchaser.

– “Antic­i­pa­tion of the eco­nomic col­lapse of the US Gov­ern­ment” – Promi­nent scholars and econ­o­mists are openly debating the bank­ruptcy and insol­vency of the United States government.

– “Pos­sible Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion (Con Con)” — 32 states have called for a Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion to force Con­gress and the Exec­u­tive Branch into a bal­anced budget, but many are con­cerned that if called, Con Con would be taken over by hos­tile inter­ests who would intro­duce Amend­ments that are harmful to national sovereignty.

– “North Amer­ican Union” — MIAC states that “Con­spiracy the­o­rists claim that this union would link Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The NAU would unify its mon­e­tary system and trade the dollar for the AMERO. Asso­ci­ated with this theory is con­cern over a NAFTA Super­highway, which would fast track trade between the three nations. There is addi­tional con­cern that the NAU would open up the border causing secu­rity risks and free move­ment for immigrants.”

– “Uni­versal Ser­vice Pro­gram” — “State­ments made by Pres­i­dent Elect Obama and his chief of staff have led extrem­ists to fear the cre­ation of a Civilian Defense Force. This theory requires all cit­i­zens between the age of 18 and 25 to be forced to attend three months of manda­tory training.” (This is exactly what Obama and Rahm Emmanuel have repeat­edly stated on national TV, and thus is hardly a theory.)

– “Radio Fre­quency Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID)” — This includes human implan­ta­tion, but the larger con­cern is uni­versal id cards and per­sonal prop­erty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that can be read elec­tron­i­cally without the bearer’s knowledge.

Cit­i­zens who are con­cerned about the above issues are then lumped into rad­ical ide­olo­gies such as Chris­tian Iden­tity, White Nation­al­ists (e.g., neo-Nazi, Skin­heads, etc.) and anti-Semites. Tax Resisters and Anti-Immigration advo­cates are thrown into the same category.

The MIAC report then sternly warns law enforce­ment personnel,

“You are the Enemy: The militia sub­scribes to an antigov­ern­ment and NWO mind set, which cre­ates a threat to law enforce­ment offi­cers. They view the mil­i­tary, National Guard, and law enforce­ment as a force that will con­fis­cate their firearms and place them in FEMA con­cen­tra­tion camps.” [Bold emphasis appears in original]

On the last page of the MIAC report, a sec­tion listing Polit­ical Para­pher­nalia (flags and sym­bols) states,

“Militia mem­bers most com­monly asso­ciate with 3rd party polit­ical groups. It is not uncommon for militia mem­bers to dis­play Con­sti­tu­tional Party, Cam­paign for Lib­erty, or Lib­er­tarian mate­rial. These mem­bers are usu­ally sup­porters of former Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.

Militia mem­bers com­monly dis­play pic­ture, car­toons, bumper stickers that con­tain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this mate­rial will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforce­ment, and the ‘New World Order’ in a deroga­tory manor (sic). Addi­tion­ally, Racial, anti-immigration, and anti-abortion, mate­rial may be dis­played by militia members.”

What was the osten­sible gen­esis of all these “threats” to law enforce­ment? The report explains it this way…

“Aca­d­e­mics con­tend that female and minority empow­er­ment in the 1970s and 1960s caused a blow to white male’s sense of empow­er­ment. This, com­bined with a sense of defeat from the Vietnam War, increased levels of immi­gra­tion, and unem­ploy­ment, spawned a para­mil­i­tary cul­ture. This caught on in the 1980’s with injects such as Tom Clancy novels, Solder of For­tune Mag­a­zine, and movies such as Rambo that glo­ri­fied combat. This cul­ture glo­ri­fied white males and por­trayed them as morally upright heroes who were men­tally and phys­i­cally tough.

“It was during this time­frame that many indi­vid­uals and orga­ni­za­tions began to con­coct con­spiracy the­o­ries to explain their mis­for­tunes. These the­o­ries varied but almost always involved a glob­alist dic­ta­tor­ship the“New World Order (NWO), which con­spired to exploit the working class citizens.”

In other words, these “ridicu­lous NWO the­o­ries” were cre­ated by psy­cho­log­ical deviants who were trying to jus­tify their own self-induced misfortunes.

Fear ye, all troopers

For unsus­pecting law enforce­ment per­sonnel, this MIAC training doc­u­ment polar­izes unsus­pecting offi­cers to fear peaceful, law-abiding cit­i­zens and greatly increases the risk of armed con­fronta­tion. For instance, a rou­tine traffic stop would be esca­lated if the officer observes a Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin bumper sticker on the rear bumper of the car. The mere pos­ses­sion of printed mate­rial such as the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion or Bill of Rights would be viewed as sub­ver­sive, even though most offi­cers are required to take an oath to “defend and uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States” as a con­di­tion of their employment.

Addi­tion­ally, troopers are indoc­tri­nated that all such topics are pure fan­tasy and without any fac­tual basis. Even if they had their own con­cerns, they would be ridiculed into accepting the posi­tion that all crit­i­cism of the New World Order is dan­gerous to their well being.

The Columbia Daily Tri­bune (Columbia, Mis­souri) reports this con­cern from local res­i­dent Tim Neal, who appar­ently fits the MIAC’s “Modern Militia” profile:

“If a police officer is pulling me over with my family in the car and he sees a bumper sticker on my vehicle that has been specif­i­cally iden­ti­fied as one that an extremist would have in their vehicle, the guy is prob­ably going to be pretty appre­hen­sive and not thinking in a rational manner, and this guy’s walking up to my vehicle with a gun.” [see ‘Fusion Center’ draws fire over asser­tions]

MIAC is a Fusion Center

As men­tioned above, the Mis­souri Infor­ma­tion Analysis Center is one of a net­work of over 50 Fusion Cen­ters around the country.

According to the National Crim­inal Intel­li­gence Resource Center (NCIRC), a Fusion Center is “a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of two or more agen­cies that pro­vide resources, exper­tise, and/or infor­ma­tion to the center with the goal of max­i­mizing the ability to detect, pre­vent, appre­hend, and respond to crim­inal and ter­rorist activity.”

As of 2006, the NCIRC listed 50 Fusion Cen­ters in var­ious states.

Most impor­tantly, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity are the dri­ving forces behind Fusion Cen­ters, having pub­lished “Fusion Center Guide­lines: Devel­oping and Sharing Infor­ma­tion and Intel­li­gence in a New World.” This report head­lines “Fusion” as “Turning Infor­ma­tion and Intel­li­gence Into Action­able Knowledge.”

Fusion Cen­ters are one of five areas of infor­ma­tion sharing under the Infor­ma­tion Sharing Envi­ron­ment (ISE) that was estab­lished by the Intel­li­gence Reform and Ter­rorism Pre­ven­tion Act of 2004.

ISE mem­ber­ship includes the Depart­ment of Com­merce, CIA, Depart­ment of Defense, Director of National Intel­li­gence, Depart­ment of Energy, FBI, Health and Human Ser­vices, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, National Counter-Terrorism Center, Depart­ment of Inte­rior, Office of Man­age­ment and Budget, Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Depart­ment of State, Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the Depart­ment of Treasury.

According to one white paper (on the ISE web site) enti­tled The Intel­li­gence Fusion Process for State, Local and Tribal Law Enforce­ment, “The most impor­tant output of the intel­li­gence Fusion Center is action­able intel­li­gence. This means that the intel­li­gence pro­duced by the center will drive oper­a­tional responses and strategic aware­ness of threats.” Accordingly,

“The heart of good intel­li­gence analysis is to have a diverse array of valid and reli­able raw infor­ma­tion for analysis. The more robust the raw infor­ma­tion, the more accu­rate the ana­lytic output (i.e., intel­li­gence) will be.”

The above men­tioned MIAC report, issued by an offi­cial Fusion Center, is appar­ently part of this “diverse array of valid and reli­able raw information.”

How­ever, ISE’s under­standing of intel­li­gence is foolish. Any intel­li­gence ana­lyst knows that so-called raw infor­ma­tion is treated as garbage until ver­i­fied from mul­tiple sources to val­i­date accu­racy, com­plete­ness and freedom from bias. Sec­ondly, ana­lytic output depends upon trained and expe­ri­enced human rea­soning and judg­ment, not on the “robust­ness” of the raw infor­ma­tion itself.

Where do Fusion Cen­ters get inputs?

According to their own doc­u­ments, Fusion Cen­ters are “seeded” with ideas for analysis by the FBI and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity. Although this is prob­lem­atic in itself, atten­tion is better directed to the left-wing non­profit orga­ni­za­tion, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Upon careful word and theme com­par­ison between the MIAC report and SPLC lit­er­a­ture, it is apparent that there is a sig­nif­i­cant link between the two. Either MIAC received training or training mate­rial from SPLC or some of its per­sonnel had some pre­vious expo­sure to it.

The SPLC aggres­sively offers training to local, state and fed­eral law enforce­ment agen­cies. According to the SPLC web site, “We focus on the his­tory, back­ground, leaders and activ­i­ties of far-right extrem­ists in the U.S.” and states that it “is inter­na­tion­ally known for its tol­er­ance edu­ca­tion pro­grams, its legal vic­to­ries against white suprema­cists and its tracking of hate groups.”

Hate crimes are essen­tially acts of vil­i­fi­ca­tion of a victim because of his or her mem­ber­ship in a cer­tain social group, such as racial, reli­gious, sexual ori­en­ta­tion, nation­ality, gender, etc. While hate crimes are wrong under any cir­cum­stance, the SPLC sees no con­flict in pro­filing con­ser­v­a­tive whites, Chris­tians, Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists, and patriots as being asso­ci­ated with, if not respon­sible for, hate crimes in America. This is the pot calling the kettle black.

For instance, con­sider the SPLC state­ment, “…a basic fact about all three move­ments: Patriots, white suprema­cists and anti-abortion mil­i­tants are all fueled by inter­pre­ta­tions of religion.”

Aside from the fact that this sweeping gen­er­al­iza­tion is plainly not true, it is mud-slinging at its best: Patriots are lumped in with white suprema­cists, anti-abortionists are mil­i­tants, and all are driven by an obvi­ously irra­tional and fanat­ical appli­ca­tion of religion.

In another SPLC article about a tragic killing in South Car­olina, enti­tled “The Abbeville Horror”, the writer goes well beyond just the facts of the story and is careful to sprinkle in words and phrases such as:

Patriots, tax pro­tes­tors, sov­er­eign cit­i­zens, antigov­ern­ment extrem­ists, New World Order para­noia, Dis­arming U.S. Cit­i­zens, hard-line Chris­tian Right, con­sti­tu­tional rights, antigov­ern­ment “Patriot” lit­er­a­ture, anti-Semitic con­spiracy, “Live Free or Die,” Ruby Ridge and Waco, Second Amend­ment, extremist orga­nizing, “closet extrem­ists,” para­noid beliefs, “Give me lib­erty or give me death.” [quotes appear in orig­inal text]

These are the same kinds of words and themes that are seen in The Modern Militia Move­ment article, where dis­tinc­tions between good and bad people are blurred and con­fused: All are guilty by asso­ci­a­tion, if nothing else.

Should a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion like SPLC be allowed to pro­vide offi­cial training to public-entrusted law enforce­ment agen­cies? Most would say, “No.” Even if the training was free, the agency should reject influ­ence from the public sector, and even more so if it presents biased and one-sided infor­ma­tion that is claimed to be factual.

Con­clu­sion

It is crit­ical to under­stand that the legit­i­mate law enforce­ment agen­cies of cities, coun­ties and states are not adver­saries of the people. They are greatly needed for pro­tec­tion against crime and for keeping order in our communities.

They are, how­ever, being method­i­cally seeded with very wrong­headed and dan­gerous infor­ma­tion, the spe­cific intent of which is to polarize law enforce­ment against peaceful cit­i­zens who simply care about the down­fall of their country.

This writer inter­viewed Chuck Baldwin and asked about how he felt when he first saw his good name asso­ci­ated with those who would threaten bodily harm to law enforce­ment agen­cies. “Per­son­ally, I was stunned,” he said, “but my family has taken this very per­son­ally as well. This is more than disturbing.”

When asked about the pos­sible affect of the report on the Con­sti­tu­tion Party, of which he was the 2008 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, he replied, “I think it will gal­va­nize people and help them to under­stand the nature of the battle we are in. Freedom must be defended.”

In fact, the MIAC report has cre­ated a firestorm all over America. Tens of thou­sands of protests are being called, written, emailed and faxed to author­i­ties and leg­is­la­tors in Mis­souri. It would not be sur­prising to see the report rescinded and an apology given.

Even so, behind-the-scene groups like the SPLC will con­tinue unabated and unde­terred in their effort to mis­in­form and dis­rupt healthy com­mu­nity rela­tions with worthy law enforce­ment agen­cies and personnel.

The mes­sage to every juris­dic­tion: Don’t let it happen!

Final thought

Locate the Fusion Center in your state and keep a close eye on the infor­ma­tion they are releasing. Stay close to as many law enforce­ment per­sonnel as you can, asking them to keep their eyes open for reports sim­ilar to the Mis­souri report. Peti­tion your state leg­is­la­tors to ban law enforce­ment training by pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Addi­tional resources

FBI nudges state ‘fusion cen­ters’ into the shadows (CNET)

Fusion Cen­ters and Pri­vacy (EPIC)

Back­grounder: Fusion Cen­ters (CFR.org)

Infor­ma­tion Sharing Envi­ron­ment (ISE)

ISE Web site